# The artist is WRONG about his own work. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 12, 2014, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900 "2014-07-12T00:07:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Gerald\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Gerald\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gerald_II)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/161 "2014-07-16T08:57:12Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Nothing you provided came even close to being examples of why Scott is “wrong”. Your points, to the extent they make any sense at all, are based on highly subjective judgment calls. They could never be sufficient to say Scott is “wrong”. That’s because you are going by what the director said outside of the film, and on your own of interpretation of a strange sequence that’s never explained. ---
**Author:** ![Gerald\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Gerald\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gerald_II)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/162 "2014-07-16T09:15:05Z")
Tupac Shakur claiming he nor his music exhibited an anti-New York/East vs West sentiment. He was wrong and his music reflects it. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/163 "2014-07-16T09:31:09Z")
Deckard the replicant had to start his replicant life somewhere. Him starting it coming out of retirement makes no more or less sense than him starting it anywhere else. This simply isn’t even close to being incompatible with him being a replicant sufficient to make Scott wrong. Replicants clearly are on Earth to some extent. Rachel is on Earth for a start. As above, if the rules can allow - or be bent to allow - Rachel they can allow Deckard. As for Deckard being given responsibility, note how Gaff is always hanging around? Why is that? Further, you have no idea what prototypes came before Deckard. The story leaves all that open. If the government and the Tyrell organisation are working towards allowing replicant Blade Runners, there has to be a first one at some point. Who’s to say it’s not Deckard? If there was some special permit to allow Deckard would the movie logically have to let the viewer know that? Nope. Indeed, doing so would spoil the story. Still further, if you were releasing an experimental replicant Blade Runner and were concerned to make sure it didn’t run amok, would you program it to be largely disgusted by killing? Is that how Deckard is? Yep. In the end, your point such as it is, in no way necessitates a conclusion that Scott is “wrong”. Your point re Bryant is pissweak. You are pinning an allegation that a director is wrong about his own movie on your completely made up assumption that Byrant would necessarily be a sufficiently bad actor that he would make his knowledge of Deckard’s nature obvious. Let me ask you this: does Deckard give away to Rachel that he knows she is a replicant? Nope. So you think if Deckard was a replicant Bryant would _have_ to give that away, but for some totally non-existent reason, despite Deckard knowing Rachel was a replicant it’s OK that he didn’t give that away. Pissweak and in no way sufficient to say Scott was wrong. As to the Q&A, why so? We already know that Rachel’s subjective experience was so human-like it took way more questions than usual to tell she was a replicant, and she didn’t even know she was one. Why is it _necessary_ to assume that Deckard would know that his own emotional responses to the questions weren’t as they should be? You totally miss the point about the unicorn dream. It is either an extraordinary co-incidence that Gaff makes an origami unicorn and Deckard happens to dream about one, or Gaff knows about Deckard’s dreams. As you yourself said above, Deckard’s nod could easily be just because of his recognition that Gaff has been there (as evidenced by the origami) but was letting him and Rachel go, on the basis she was going to die soon anyway and it wouldn’t achieve anything to get into a fight trying to stop them. Your problem is that you’ve set such a high bar for yourself (Scott is “wrong”) that merely coming up with points that are potentially compatible with your explanation are not enough. You need to come up with points that force a conclusion that Deckard was not a replicant, and you have completely failed to reach that height. ---
**Author:** ![Gerald\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Gerald\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gerald_II)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/164 "2014-07-16T10:03:10Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > The story leaves all that open. If the government and the Tyrell organisation are working towards allowing replicant Blade Runners, there has to be a first one at some point. Who’s to say it’s not Deckard? If there was some special permit to allow Deckard would the movie logically have to let the viewer know that? Nope. Indeed, doing so would spoil the story. Still further, if you were releasing an experimental replicant Blade Runner and were concerned to make sure it didn’t run amok, would you program it to be largely disgusted by killing? Is that how Deckard is? Yep. Fan wankery. > [@](#): > > Let me ask you this: does Deckard give away to Rachel that he knows she is a replicant? He’s not pretending to know Rachel for a long period of time. And also, there’s never a scene where Deckard is going along with the ruse that Rachel is human. He thinks she’s human until she fails the VK test and Tyrell promptly tells her to leave. Next time Deckard sees Rachel he tells her right away that he knows all her memories and that they’re not real. > [@](#): > > So you think if Deckard was a replicant Bryant would _have_ to give that away, but for some totally non-existent reason, despite Deckard knowing Rachel was a replicant it’s OK that he didn’t give that away. Bryant wouldn’t give it away to Deckard purposely if he was pretending, but there’s nothing to indicate that Bryant was pretending at all. No clues that give it away to us, the audience, that we can re-watch to see that Bryant was lying the whole time about knowing Deckard for so long. > [@](#): > > As to the Q&A, why so? We already know that Rachel’s subjective experience was so human-like it took way more questions than usual to tell she was a replicant, and she didn’t even know she was one. Why is it _necessary_ to assume that Deckard would know that his own emotional responses to the questions weren’t as they should be? Well there was something about the test that made her question her humanity because she later confronted Deckard about it. If it created doubt for her, why wouldn’t it for Deckard? > [@](#): > > You totally miss the point about the unicorn dream. It is either an extraordinary co-incidence that Gaff makes an origami unicorn and Deckard happens to dream about one, or Gaff knows about Deckard’s dreams. We don’t know it’s a dream, a memory or a thought. And you miss the entire point of the film, as did I initially, which is _what makes us human?_ The film is asking the audience to decide. > [@](#): > > As you yourself said above, Deckard’s nod could easily be just because of his recognition that Gaff has been there (as evidenced by the origami) but was letting him and Rachel go, on the basis she was going to die soon anyway and it wouldn’t achieve anything to get into a fight trying to stop them. So you’re assuming that the unicorn sequence IS a dream of Deckard’s exclusively but that he wouldn’t make the connection between it and an origami unicorn left outside his apartment by a fellow blade runner? > [@](#): > > Your problem is that you’ve set such a high bar for yourself (Scott is “wrong”) that merely coming up with points that are potentially compatible with your explanation are not enough. You need to come up with points that force a conclusion that Deckard was not a replicant, and you have completely failed to reach that height. And yet there is no proof that you can present from the film that says Deckard is a replicant. The movie on its own is ambiguous on the issue of Deckard being a replicant which is why Ridley Scott is wrong about it. There is a lot to imply that he is a replicant, and a lot to imply that he isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![dba\_Fred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c37758/32.png) [@dba\_Fred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dba_Fred)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/165 "2014-07-16T11:30:45Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I have heard that Chuck Lorre insists that Sheldon Cooper does not have OCD (“… my mother had me tested …”), to me it looks like he is just trying to CHA. Except [Mary Cooper: Although I do regret not following up with that specialist in Houston.](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0226865/quotes) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/166 "2014-07-16T14:45:42Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Whether the artist is “WRONG”. Which is, entirely, a question of perception and opinion. What else could it possibly be? > [@](#): > > There is a dance that I see performed in Cafe Society continually. We could perhaps call it the Cafe Society Two Step. It goes like this: Poster A first steps firmly forward saying something very emphatically about a work of art, as a statement of truth. Poster A enjoys the rhetorical impact of the certainty and confidence of their statement. Then Poster B steps forward calling out Poster A as stating something with no rational basis, at which point Poster A steps firmly back while singing the “it was just my opinion” song. Yeah, there are a lot of people out there who have trouble with the idea that all art is inherently subjective, and get riled up when people don’t preface every statement about art with “IMO.” > [@](#): > > I’m not saying there has to be rigid rules about appreciation of art. However, unless the word “WRONG” is to be deprived of all meaning, one cannot say someone is “WRONG” about a work of art without having some framework as to what is right and what is not. These statements appear to be directly contradicting each other. Are there rules for appreciating a work of art, or aren’t there? > [@](#): > > Sure, it could all be complete coincidence. You can lead a horse to water… You just completely slid past the part of my post where I said I agree with the idea that Deckard is a replicant, didn’t you? At any rate, I didn’t say it was coincidence, I said it might not have a literal, plot-related meaning. If you watch _The Sixth Sense_, every time a ghost shows up, the color red is used prominently in the scene. This is not coincidental, but it’s also not part of the plot. You could not exorcise a ghost from your house by removing all the red things from it. The connection between the color and the supernatural is purely symbolic - it’s there to communicate a theme, not a plot element. The unicorn imagery in Bladerunner certainly can have a literal meaning, and again, that’s my personal view of the film. But it doesn’t _have_ to have a literal meaning, and interpreting the unicorn imagery as symbolic is a perfectly valid approach to the work. > [@](#): > > You say that the twenty year controversy is indicative of its substance. The twenty year controversy has a lot of reasons behind it. Key I think is that the first version of the film was more ambiguous and the director didn’t say anything at first. This lead to a lot of emotional investment in a point of view that was contradicted by the director’s cut, which has in my opinion lead to a lot of people keeping a controversy alive past it being rational to do so. Yeah, I wondered how long it was going to take you to start second guessing other peoples motives for not agreeing with you about a movie. It’s something that seems to go hand-in-hand with an insistence on an objective interpretation of a work of art. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/167 "2014-07-16T16:19:11Z")
> [@Gerald\_II](#): > > I provided examples of why Scott is wrong. There’s nothing in the film to definitively say that Deckard is a replicant, and even though Scott says Deckard is a replicant, the material leaves it ambiguous enough that it can go either way. Well- the author and the book say Deckard is NOT a replicant. And the few film version indicated nothing of the sort. I think Ridley just wanted to stir up some controversy. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/168 "2014-07-16T16:27:49Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Well, then, you believe the [creators are wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Cooper#Asperger_syndrome). > > I do agree with you that he has Asperger’s, but I also see no reason to believe they are lying when they say they didn’t use that as their basis for his character. I do like the out they gave that his mother never had him diagnosed. So it’s undiagnosed Asperger’s. Jim Parsons has stated that this is how he plays Sheldon, so to be brutally honost the creators’ views on this matter really aren’t very relevant. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/169 "2014-07-16T23:49:16Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > Jim Parsons has stated that this is how he plays Sheldon, so to be brutally honost the creators’ views on this matter really aren’t very relevant. Has he? I remember reading an interview with Parsons in the AV Club where he said he didn’t even know what Asperger’s syndrome was until after the show was already on the air. Here it is: [The A.V. Club — Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.](http://www.avclub.com/article/jim-parsons-27415). He goes on to say that he read _Look Me in the Eye_ at the recommendation of a castmate and that it certainly reminded him of Sheldon but that he’s done no other research on Asperger’s syndrome. I also found a more recent [_Time_ interview](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2048322,00.html) where he says basically the same thing: > [@](#): > > **Although it hasn’t been addressed on the show, Sheldon clearly has some degree of Asperger’s or autism. How did you prepare to play such a character?** > > I didn’t. We had already shot and aired several episodes before I was ever asked the Asperger’s-or-autism question. I asked the writers, and they were like, No, he doesn’t have it. It’s been useful to us to utilize some of those “Aspergian” traits, but we need to be able to move away from it if we want to. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/170 "2014-07-17T09:43:16Z")
Han shot first. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/171 "2014-07-17T10:28:17Z")
> [@Dave\_Hartwick](#): > > Han shot first. Wrong. Han shot, period. For something to be first, there has to be a second, and no-one else fired their weapon in that scene. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/172 "2014-07-17T19:14:21Z")
I believe the creators who say **Puff the Magic Dragon** [has nothing to do with smoking marijuana](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OiOlnoyljk). ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/173 "2014-07-17T19:45:34Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Han shot, period. For something to be first, there has to be a second, and no-one else fired their weapon in that scene. Opal shot third. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/174 "2014-07-17T20:17:02Z")
Re: Blade Runner You have to pull back a little, get meta. Ridley Scott is wrong about Blade Runner, but not in the way the argument in this thread is going. In _Future Noir_, the book about making Blade Runner, there is a section where the screenwriter, Hampton Fancher, is talking with Scott about a scene. (I don’t have the book in front of me, so excuse the paraphrasing). Fancher describes proposed dialog by Deckard in which Deckard muses about his “creator”. Fancher intended that to mean God, but Scott interpreted that to mean the Fancher was writing the movie as if Deckard was a replicant, and creator meant Tyrell. He thought that was a great idea, and ran off, with his new “vision”. I picture Scott gleefully dancing down the hallway, with Fancher standing there dumbfounded, going “no…wait…stop” to Scott’s receding backside, to no avail. So, Scott was wrong in understanding his own writer’s intent. He is “right” in that in his vision of what the movie is, Deckard is a replicant. He is wrong, as that was not what the writer intended or how Harrison Ford thought he was playing the character. If you view a movie as the sole product of the director, Scott is right. if you view a movie as a combination of the inputs of all the participants, Scott is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/175 "2014-07-17T20:27:23Z")
That reminds me of [Opal Whiteley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_Whiteley) and her diary. The author says it was genuine. Some readers say it was a put-on. But does it really matter whether or not it was real? And if it was real, what can one discern about the author’s intent? ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/176 "2014-07-17T21:12:32Z")
> [@Gerald\_II](#): > > That’s because you are going by what the director said outside of the film, and on your own of interpretation of a strange sequence that’s never explained. You’ve nailed the one aspect of the controversy that completely baffles me. The Deckard-is-a-replicant faction’s argument eventually boils down to “Ridley says so, and that settles it.” Since when is a _director_ the final arbiter of what is “true” inside a purely fictional narrative that he didn’t write, based on a novel he didn’t write? To me, that argument is just completely bizarre. Imagine if Chris Columbus announced that the first Harry Potter movie was just a dream Harry had while sleeping under the stairs. The fans would go apeshit and crucify him; they sure as hell wouldn’t accept that he has the final word. If Scott feels so strongly about Deckard’s replicantosity, why didn’t he make this absolutely clear in the film? He could have ordered his screenwriters to script a big reveal, but he didn’t. He filmed what they wrote, including things that make no sense if Deckard’s a replicant (already cited at length by **Gerald II** ). Scott’s had two opportunities to revise the film and settle the issue, but he chose to leave it ambiguous. In fact, one of his revisions actually obviates one of the clues that the Dec-a-Rep crowd loved to cite (Bryant’s line about one of the escaped replicants getting fried). I doubt that Scott himself is as certain about this as fans seem to think. Scott thought it would be cool to sow doubts about Deckard’s humanity, so he shoehorned some unscripted visual clues into the film. But those clues can be interpreted in any number of ways. The fact remains that the _question isn’t answered inside the film narrative_. The Ridley-says-so argument might have some weight if there had been no source novel and Scott had written an original screenplay himself. But that’s not what happened; Scott was hired to direct a script that been floating around for a while. When Scott says in an interview that Deckard is a replicant, it’s nothing more than his own take on a story he didn’t create. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/177 "2014-07-17T21:23:09Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > So, Scott was wrong in understanding his own writer’s intent. He is “right” in that in his vision of what the movie is, Deckard is a replicant. He is wrong, as that was not what the writer intended or how Harrison Ford thought he was playing the character. > > If you view a movie as the sole product of the director, Scott is right. if you view a movie as a combination of the inputs of all the participants, Scott is wrong. On another message board, someone actually tried to argue with me by saying that Scott is right because he’s a famous, powerful Hollywood director with a lot of clout, and Hampton Fancher is wrong because he’s still mostly a nobody in the film industry with only a few writing credits. It will be interesting to see what happens if Fancher writes the sequel that is reportedly in the works, because he hated the notion of Deckard being a replicant. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/178 "2014-07-17T22:59:17Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > You’ve nailed the one aspect of the controversy that completely baffles me. The Deckard-is-a-replicant faction’s argument eventually boils down to “Ridley says so, and that settles it.” That’s not accurate, either. There are strong arguments on both sides. “What the director said,” is, however, not one of them. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/179 "2014-07-18T00:04:47Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That’s not accurate, either. There are strong arguments on both sides. “What the director said,” is, however, not one of them. I agree with you that it’s not a strong argument. A lot of people seem to think otherwise, though. Scott notably added insult to injury by saying, “If you don’t get it, you’re a moron.” He thinks we’re morons for believing this is debatable. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2014, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900/180 "2014-07-18T00:38:37Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > As to point five, this is complete fanwank. You are making up something for which there is not an iota of actual evidence. You are being given a clue in a story and instead of taking it you are choosing to find a way to explain it away. Your choice, of course. I don’t think fanwanking away the unicorn dream is any worse than the various fanwanks explaining why Roy, Pris, and Leon are able to beat the living shit out of fellow replicant Rick Deckard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-artist-is-wrong-about-his-own-work/692900.md?page=10)